Resident questions ambulance response

David Hulse
Posted 8/21/12

Resident Kelly Magee brought an issue of prompt ambulance response before township supervisors on September 16.

Magee said she had waited 30 minutes after calling for an ambulance after her …

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Resident questions ambulance response

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Resident Kelly Magee brought an issue of prompt ambulance response before township supervisors on September 16.

Magee said she had waited 30 minutes after calling for an ambulance after her four-year-old son suffered a seizure late at night on August 21.

Magee noted that Tafton, Hemlock Farms and Hawley ambulances are all closer to her home than the Lackawaxen Ambulance Service, and asked if the supervisors could do anything about who responds to which calls.

Supervisor Rich Krochta, a former township fire chief, said Hawley is usually called in mutual aid when the Lackawaxen ambulance service responds to a call.

Supervisors’ chair Brian Stuart said the response time is usually closer to 15 minutes, and asked Krochta to call the county emergency communications center and inquire about the incident.

Magee said an Atlantic Health Systems ambulance finally responded. Her son was transported to Bon Secours Hospital and transferred to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, where he was admitted, treated and released. Magee’s son, now in good health, accompanied her at the meeting.

Meeting briefly last week, the township supervisors dealt with several pieces of business, prominent among them approval of a minor update of Lackawaxen Township’s emergency management plan.

According to state law (Title 35, Pa C.S. Section 7503) each township, borough, town or city must “prepare, maintain and keep current a disaster emergency management plan for the prevention and minimization of injury and damage caused by disaster, prompt and effective response to disaster and disaster emergency relief and recovery in consonance with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Plan.”

To prompt compliance, the law also provides that those local governments failing to comply “shall… be subject to loss of federal personnel and administrative funding for the remainder of the fiscal year in which conviction is established.”

The supervisors also heard Marge Wass-

mer renew her complaint about a PPL contractor’s failure to clean up trees cut and left along the utility right of way on her road and the supervisors’ failure to act on her earlier report of the problem. “A local couldn’t do that. Why them?” she asked. “They couldn’t get away with it in Milford,” she added.

They also re-signed un-filed minor subdivision maps for Michael Mancino and Ken Hoene, agreed to re-advertise a surveyed loader for which no purchase bids were received and adjourned into executive session on a personnel issue.

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